Identifying priority areas for conservation to promote connectivity and mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance.

ABSTRACT: As nations seek to expand protected area (PA) networks to cover 30% of land and seas by 2030 (30×30), there is an urgent need for systematic conservation planning and spatial prioritization that considers the broad range of ecological and socioeconomic factors influencing the persistence of biodiversity. A remaining challenge in spatial prioritization is identifying areas that not only contribute to ecological connectivity but also are vulnerable to isolation and connectivity decline caused by anthropogenic disturbance. We devised an approach to assess PA networks and prioritize areas for conservation action and applied it to the Swedish coastal Baltic Sea area as an example. We developed connectivity models for 16 key fish species to identify habitats that provide the greatest contributio

SUBMITTER: Sacre E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12658951 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature